Throughout a vehicle such as an automobile, opening and closing members such as window glasses to be mounted to doors and a tailgate (back door) to be mounted to the rear end of the auto body are mounted. Also, to ease opening and closing operations of these opening and closing members, vehicles mounting automatic opening and closing apparatuses such as a power window apparatus and a power tailgate apparatus have been developed.
As such an automatic opening and closing apparatus, for example, like a power window apparatus including a regulator of an X-arm type, an arm-driving type automatic opening and closing apparatus has been known, in which an opening and closing member is coupled to a tip of a drive arm swingably supported to an auto body or a door by a support shaft so that the opening and closing member is opened and closed by driving the drive arm to swing by an electric motor. In this case, a gear case which houses a worm gear mechanism is attached to the electric motor, and a drive gear fixed to an output shaft is disposed to an outer surface of the gear case, and a driven gear provided to a base end of the drive arm is meshed with the drive gear. In this manner, when the electric motor is activated, rotation of the electric motor is transmitted from the drive gear to the driven gear and the drive arm is swung together with the driven gear.
Meanwhile, as such an automatic opening and closing apparatus, one in which a bracket is fixed to a gear case and a support shaft is supported by this bracket to keep a mesh pitch of a drive gear and a driven gear has been known. However, even in such a configuration, when load is applied from an opening and closing body to a drive arm in a direction inclined with respect to the support shaft, the mesh accuracy is degraded as the driven gear is inclined with respect to the drive gear, and thus there have been abnormal noise generated from the meshing portion and a lowering of activation efficiency of the automatic opening and closing apparatus.
Therefore, for example, in the automatic opening and closing apparatus described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-90796, by using a part of a bracket, a pressing portion which abuts a side surface of the driven gear to presses the driven gear to the gear case side so that an inclination of the driven gear is suppressed by the pressing portion and meshing between the drive gear and driven gear is maintained.